The Moral Law We All Live By

The Existence of a “Moral Law” We All Live By

Why believe in an all-powerful Creator?

All human beings, whether they admit or not, live by an innately understood “Moral Law”. We usually refer to this as our conscience, and when we are about to do something wrong that violates our conscience, we refrain. Not only that, if we see someone else doing something we feel wrong, we normally let them know about it – “you shouldn’t do that!”. In like manner, when we – or someone we observe does something admirable, we applaud them: “Well done”, we say.

But where did we get this sense of “right and wrong” to judge our actions, or the actions of others by? We are acting in accord with “standards” that are external to us – “moral measuring rods”, if you like.

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argued that “conscience reveals to us a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, thus pointing to a supernatural Lawgiver.” Lewis argued that accepting the validity of human reason as a given must include accepting the validity of practical reason, which could not be valid without reference to a higher cosmic moral order which could not exist without a God to create and/or establish it. (Wikipedia).